Online networks, such as the Internet, are increasingly being used for business purposes. In this regard, many enterprises have created “online” businesses by establishing web sites for marketing and other commercial purposes. These businesses derive revenues by advertising and selling their products and services via the Internet as well as by selling advertising space on their sites.
Promotion
In order to generate a successful, commercially focussed web site, it is necessary to generate a large number of visitors to a web site, which initially requires advertising and promoting the existence of the web site. This can be an expensive and lengthy process.
There is therefore a need for a mechanism by which traders are able to set up a web site and have access to advertising resources, such as targeted advertising mechanisms.
There is also a need for an improved mechanism to make Internet users aware of particular products and services being offered for sale over the Internet.
Consumer Purchasing Details
Once a trader has set up an appropriate web site from which to trade, it is also necessary for the trader to have a secure mechanism when dealing with customers. In this regard, some traders require a customer to provide their credit and address details, and their details are then saved on the trader's database, so that they may readily be accessed in future transactions. Many customers do not like the idea of having their private details stored on a trader's database for fear of these details being misused. For example, the details may accidentally be made public, or a hacker may forcedly gain access to the details, or the trader may decide to use the details for their own purposes, such as establishing a list of consumers for marketing purposes.
There is therefore a need to provide an improved mechanism for dealing with customers' private details.
There is also a need for an improved method of conducting transactions in an online environment.
Access to Email Accounts
A further problem that has been created with the advent of the Internet is that many individuals and businesses are setting up one or more email accounts with various Internet service providers. To access these accounts, it is generally necessary for the user to manually configure and dial up their account to see if they have any email messages. This can be a time consuming procedure. In addition, if the user has multiple email addresses the procedure becomes even more time consuming. The greater the number of email accounts held by a particular user, the greater the inconvenience to check their status regularly, so that the potential for missing important email communications also increases.
This problem is particularly relevant if a person is away from their normal base, such as whilst travelling, whilst seconded to a client or if the person is associated with a business that has multiple offices. For example, whilst a person is at work it is generally difficult to access a home email account, and vice versa.
There is therefore a need for an improved email system and/or method.
Language of the Internet
The Internet has evolved from an English language base and is thus skewed towards English language speakers. The preference towards the English language is evident in the greater proportion of English language sites, Internet searching facilities, domain names, URLs (universal resource locators).
Therefore, although monitors and software support non-Roman characters, these characters can not be displayed in the URL address bar of Internet browsers, hence users are unable to see non-Roman characters in the URL address bar. Accordingly, the user must know a Roman character version of the domain name.
This creates a barrier to the multitude of Internet users and potential Internet users that may have weak or no English language skills. The language barrier also makes it increasingly difficult for non-English based traders to be found on the Internet as their domain names can only be composed of Roman characters (ie abcdefg etc) and/or Arabic numerals (ie 12345 etc).
For example, Chinese characters cannot be input into an Internet browser URL address bar. Therefore, presently Chinese traders creating a presence on the Internet must obtain a domain name in a Roman phonetic version of their Chinese trading name, such as www.chinesetrader.com.cn. More importantly, this Roman version must be promoted as such and hopefully remembered by the target market.
There is therefore a need for an improved URL addressing method and/or system.
Wireless Communications and Data Access
In recent years, the online environment has broadened its reach to the world of wireless communications and significant miniaturization has occurred. This is exemplified by the increased promotion and use of WAP (wireless application protocol) enabled communication networks and devices, such as mobile telephony networks, mobile/cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants).
This has resulted in both product and network suppliers focussing their attention on converging data and communication applications into single devices and creating the necessary infrastructure to enable users to access data “anywhere, anytime”.
This evolution has created the need for innovative applications that are capable of compiling, generating and distributing relevant data and services to the user of wireless communications.